A
UK-led team of scientists say that R136a1 is the most massive star
ever found. According to the Associated
Press, a
new study finds that it shines millions of times more luminous than
the sun. The star, which is about 265 solar masses, had a birth
weight of as much as 320 times that of our sun.

The mammoth
star was found at the center of a star cluster in the Tarantula
Nebula, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy
about 165,000 light-years away from the Milky Way.

The
celestial giant is losing mass through powerful winds and burns so
brightly that it has already slimmed down considerably over its
lifetime, said Paul Crowther, lead astrophysicist at the University
of Sheffield in northern England.

"Unlike humans, these
stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age," said
Crowther. "R136a1 is already middle-aged and has undergone an
intense weight loss program, shedding a fifth of its initial mass
over that time, or more than fifty solar masses."

The
team of scientists compared previous findings from the NASA/ESA
Hubble Space Telescope with the new readings from the European
Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, of two young
clusters of stars. They found several stars with surface temperatures
over 40,000 degrees — more than seven times hotter than the
sun.